‘We’re Hungry’: Cadillac Tops Traverse City St. Francis in Overtime

Cadillac-- The Cadillac boys basketball squad pulled out a 54-46 OT win over Traverse City St. Francis Thursday night in their final regular season game of the 2022-23 season.

The Vikings found themselves down nine points heading into halftime, and saw their first lead change of the half with just under three minutes to go in the fourth quarter. The two teams would find themselves tied 41-41 at the end of regulation.

In overtime, Jaden Montague would hit a three-pointer, and Charlie Howell an And-1, putting the Vikings up 46-44. The Gladiators found themselves in foul trouble throughout OT, and the Vikings would come out victorious 54-46.

“We were resilient, right? We could have easily ran away and hid. And I give our guys some credit, Charlie Howell, one of our better offensive players, got into foul trouble and the guys just rallied and stepped up their game. It’s a great game for us going into March. Same thing with Sean’s [Finnegan] team, really good high school basketball game this late in the season and it prepared us for March, so that’s awesome,” Cadillac head coach Ryan Benzenberg said.

According to Benzenberg, the Vikings now look forward to having two days off to rest before getting back to practice for their district semifinal game Wednesday night.

“We have some kids that have played together for a long time. And we’re hungry, we’re hungry to get back to where we left off last year and we have some seniors--the light at the end of their tunnel is getting bigger and bigger and they want to make this thing last as long as they can,” the head coach said.